About Me

Sunday, December 17, 2006

By now most know that Google has googled up blogger.com as an appetizer to it's voracious feeding frenzy. This has all come as a surprise to me. Yep, a surprise. I recall the early days of Yahoo and Google. When I found Yahoo and they offered to supply all the news and weather "right here in one place" and even an email account, all for free, I wondered, "Now why would I want to do that? I already have a "nerdmail" account and know where the news is." On top of that, I know what the origin of the word "yahoo" is (from Johnathon Swift in "Gullivers Travels") and the name isn't referring to any thing nice (a sub-human animal)." However, little by little they became more attractive, adding maps, groups, a larger email box, good web presence, lots of news sources, and variety, variety, variety. Soon, it became the place my web surfing began and I really had a "personalized" site to check news, sports, weather, and much more.

Then, Google came along and there wasn't much reason to use it. After all, there were lots of search engines and another was pretty redundant (do you still remember the one named "dogpile?" But, then, Google got really good at finding any site I put up. If I looked for a search, Google always found my sites. Just try that with dogpile. Or many of the others that have faded away. Soon, google became an important place to go to search and to make sure your web pages were listed. Now, their "have all your news and weather in one place" is even better than Yahoo and it's my surfing start page. Add their docs and spreadsheets, calendar, maps, and so much more, and now blogger; and the web is gradually becoming "googlized." Makes me wonder just what little nerdy site promising odd stuff is wriggling into our lives in such a way that we will be surprised again when we suddenly find it wrapped around our surfing.

Any ideas on this? If you (any of you) have seen the next generation of surfing "can't do without" sites, please comment and let us know. Maybe this time I won't be surprised.

So much talk about legal and especially illegal immigration and immigrants in the United States. What do we do, what to do, when to do it, how to respond. It all seems simple to me. Treat all immigrants equally according to the manner in which their "home" country treats citizens of the United States. Thus, we in America treat Mexicans in the same manner and rule of law that their home country of Mexico treats (by rule of law and exercise of custom) those citizens of the United States who visit legally or illegally. We would do the same with citizens of Saudi Arabia, France, South Africa, Dubai, Russia, and so on.

Thus, all visiting citizens of foreign countries would know well in advance just what kind of treatment they would be honored with upon visiting the US. All they'd have to do is look around at how Americans are treated, what kind of laws their country has concerning American visitors of all kinds, just how the average citizen honors these laws, and how the visitors are treated by the citizens of their own country. No education required by the United States. No new laws required, we just follow their laws. All we need to do is show our citizens the laws and custom of treatment of the visitors countries and our citizens and law enforcement groups will easily take on the task of showing our visitors just what Quid Pro Quo means and what it means to be treated in return as we are treated. Could be that a few years of this treatment and a lot of laws would be changed in a lot of countries. Might even improve our image quite a bit when other countries find we don't put up with unequal treatment. Right now, everyone sees the American as an arrogant patsy. A target for punishment and mistreatment. Time for a change. Let's be humble and allow the other peoples of our world to tell us how to treat them.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

1,099,511,627,776

1,099,511,627,776

Now, that's a large number. No, it's not the daily national debt, it's the number of ancestors you have in 40 generations. At 25 years per generation you'd have that many "grandparents" in 1000 years. Since the number above (which represents 2 times 2 and that number times 2 for a total of 40 cycles) is more than all humans alive, ever alive, and probably ever to be alive, there is either a lot of incest going on or the average years between generations is more like 60. Since we know that the average age of child bearing has been less than 25 years over our the history of humans, something is amiss. Yet, we have just been told that the "original ancestor" has been genetically located and is at least 2000 years in our past and possibly as much as 5000 years back. If we try to find how many ancestors we would have had in 2000 years at a 25 year birth cycle, the number is totally impracticable and must be bogus somehow. Considering a lower birth cycle, each of us will have more than 2 trillion "grandparents" over the last 1000 years. The only way to tighten this up to real terms is to inbreed at a very high level. Sounds like Abraham and Sarah (she was reported as his half sister) is not an unreasonable hint about the breeding system of our past. To marry someone reasonably unrelated to you it might be required that you marry a Bushman (or woman) from an isolated tribe in Africa. Even then.....

To have a "family pedigree" hanging on the wall that shows you have great thinkers, leaders, kings, queens, or even notorious criminals in your past seems simple. Just go back about 800 or so years, choose whomever you wish and you'll be grabbing an ancestor. That is unless inbreeding, incest, and so on has been the norm. As I suppose it must be. It's either that or there were a few trillion people running amock on the planet that we are unaware of and it's possible that this was true and aliens simply have been feeding on the excess and covering up the evidence. Hmmmmm.

According to the "science" of the reports on our ancestors, if you go back a few thousand years, the first person you would meet (no matter who or where) would be an ancestor. So, I'm a relative of all those people that Moses lead out of Egypt as well as all of the people of Egypt at the time. This would make those fleeing related to those chasing (and ultimately drowned in the Red Sea). Family problems don't seem to have been any better then than now.

The whole thing is such a mess when the numbers are taken into account. I'm not ready to believe that the original ancestor was from the China/Malasia area any more than I'm ready to believe I've got about 2 trillion "grandparents" a thousand years ago. I'll just consider this work on ancestors a "work in progress" and wait for more reasonable information.

Monday, April 24, 2006

One would have thought the United States of America have learned the lesson of making any recreational drug illegal after the debacle over Prohibition. It was clear from that horrible episode that prohibiting alcohol simply expanded the criminal gang element and put money in the pockets of such as Al Capone. Organized Crime reaped a bonus of unimaginable income and power that has never gone away since. While many of these crime gangs have evolved into semi-legitimate business such as banking, these organized crime businesses are still making huge amounts of income from laws that make even a (formerly) common weed an illegal substance.

Currently, drugs pour hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars into the economy of the underworld and a number of countries who are either not friendly or are being torn internally by the Drug Lords and their economic status which in some cases rivals the very economy of the government of their country.

To this economic ruin to our culture and society let us add the economic price we pay for trying (very, very unsuccessfully) to enforce these ridiculous drug laws. But wait! There's more! The economic ruin brought about by the courts doing what they must do with any law, penalizing wrong-doers, in this case, our fellow humans caught using, selling, transporting, growing, making, and so on, a large number of recreational and addictive drugs. Does this remind us of the days of "bathtub gin" and country whisky stills? Is alcohol any less addictive than these drugs? Is alcohol any less dangerous to our society?

Yes, drugs of the recreational and addictive type are dangerous to the individual. Yes, alcohol use and abuse costs our economy billions. With alcohol we have a heavy tax which returns a sufficient amount to defray the cost to our economy. That is, if it were actually used to help defray the problems alcohol causes. The government, however, simply sucks up the tax money from alcohol and tobacco without returning it in a proper manner to alleviate alcohol and tobacco harm. Money from such taxes is used for many other programs and most particularly to pay government salaries, government benefits to government employees, and many other government needs. Not the needs of the people, the needs of governing. A cycle shown from virtually all tax, fee, or other monetary sources the government can access. Remember Social Security? Absolutely sacrosanct and untouchable? You bet!

Legalize drugs and sell them in a manner similar to alcohol. Lots of taxes to feed the Fat Cats of our government, lots of people hired to inspect, control, and collect on the drugs sold. Safe drugs. Yes I know that sounds like an Oxymoron but certainly safer than the old country stills were when whisky was a backyard business and safer than the Columbian Gold being sold and grown under who knows what circumstances and chemicals. Safer than the "garage meth" currently all over the streets of America. Control? What a joke. Drugs grown under proper supervision, reasonably tested for impurities and graded for strength, drugs produced in clean, inspected laboratories, drugs sold and taxed with the money going to the American People rather than Columbian drug lords is what we need. And NEED is the appropriate word. Let us get this mess under control, release those imprisoned for use of drugs, reduce the sentence for sale of drugs, and get this blight on our society into a cultural controlled situation.

No one needs to lose their job. The current "enforcement" people can be retrained to supervise the production, growth, and sale of these drugs. Some drugs will probably always be so dangerous that they will need license for purchase and that's a good thing. However to try to eradicate a common weed and spend a countries life blood over such a thing must stop.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Education Abuse

I have said for a long time: "The worst thing we do to our children is send them to public school." That is more true now than when I said it years ago. Public school education is governed by the government (pun intended) and at the whim of the various directing bodies which tell the teachers what they are allowed to teach and what books they are allowed to present to the student. The learning process has joined the 1984-style governing actions of the American Police State.

We are pretty much aware that there is an abundance of knowledge available to teach children and even adults. After all, it is mostly adults attending University classes. There is far too much knowledge available to begin to teach all of it even in the "normal" 16 years we are expected to attend formal schooling. By the time we have finished schooling we are each expected to be an "expert" in some segment of the knowledge pool.

In order to reach a reasonable level of awareness of the world around us and our role in that world, we need a well-balanced education that gives us a basis for the continuing education that extends throughout our lives. Children are not getting that balanced education at present and the educational processes throughout the world appear to be increasingly ethnocentral and restricted, representing a polarization of cultures and a rewriting of history to suit the various governmental agencies in charge of educating the children of our world.

Polarizing one culture from another brings a level of de-humanizing of any opposing culture, leading invariably to separation, antipathy, violence, and war. Just what we need, as if we don't have enough already. Given an education containing a cultural bias that is strong enough, the adult cannot make "educated" decisions involving world affairs. Just what the government needs; citizens that are stupid and will believe what the government says is true. Such as, for example, the Iraqi government has weapons of mass destruction and is planning to use them on the United States and other countries that are not strong enough to take care of themselves and that it is all the fault of one man, Sadam Hussien. Well, did the American public believe that sufficiently to allow the war in Iraq to begin? The answer is certainly. Not all the public but enough. There are many examples of such polarity creating false causes for war, violence, and more.

The school environment is totally unrealistic and supports levels of separation that begin the de-humanizing of other humans and the violence becomes possible. Gangs are the common character of public schools. These are divided into the jocks, the geeks, the popular, the academic, the nerds, and more. There are no classes on the value of each human, the value of community involvement, the value of other cultures, the value of kindness and so on. The strict emphasis is on teaching the government line and rewarding the children representing the school in sports: Rah, Rah, go Tigers.

Once this harm has been done to our children and the gang levels have pushed each child into a niche, the elitist move into higher schooling to become the, so-called, leaders of the communities while the lesser lights look for jobs and continue their educations "on-the-job" and usually closer to home. And that's an imteresting point. Most of the "elite" move to higher degrees and another community. Few of the "elite" stay home. Most of the "lesser lights" stay home and are the real leaders of the community. The child that is poor in math and not a good reader will be the one making $65 dollars an hour fixing your Beamer or Caddie. The child that couldn't become popular and didn't have the money to get to a university will become the factory foreman running the production of the very goods you will use in your expensive home. Some will fall by the wayside and be lost, homeless, miserable and not usually still in the community they grew up in. These will have migrated to a larger or different community to dive into drugs, alcohol, or just plain poverty. The actual community will be mostly made up of the "average" guy/gal from the local schools. The "hotshots" and the "notshots" will be gone.

What do these "average" humans bring to the community? A warped vision of the world around them and a fostering of continued warping of our educational system. The United States of America was built on an educational system that was pretty loose and involved people leading our growth with as little as no education (such as my grandfather) to those with far too much education. In nearly all cases, the education was provided by the community and did not require government restrictions. The community was the arbiter and actually allowed a more varied educational experience, a more practical educational experience than our government directed education. Very few of those leaders of our growth learned their ABC's in gigantic centers of babysitting that we now call "schools."

Thanks to a basic law of governing, we are less safe with more laws than ever before. The basic law involved is: "A government either governs by consent or by law." When a government is run by consent and cooperation, there is little need for law. When a government rules by law, there is more and more need for police, law enforcement, and laws. This also applies to education. The more government regulates the educational process, the more need for policing the education and enforcement of the education given our children. There is only one way this can end; in a 1984-style governing of the citizens by an increasingly dictatorial government.

What do I suggest? It's simple: Legislate don't Educate. The government should not be in charge of education. The government is in charge of governing. The act of governing involves creating laws that keep the citizens safe and allow the reasonable function of the country. With that in mind, we need "sunset" coverage on all our laws. All laws should require renewal every 5 to 8 years or the law ceases to have validity. In the educational area, we need to shut down all the babysitting "schools" and require parents to educate their own children. Simply set up a testing for all children at ages 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 to ensure education in general subjects (the three 'r' of classic education, reading, 'riting, and 'rithmatic). If a child flunks the test, the parents are given 6 months to bring the child up to the test level. If the child flunks again, the parents will pay for tuition of the child by outside educational contractors. If the parents cannot pay, they can do community service to the equivalent level of the taxpayers burden. Problem solved and each child has an education the parents can be proud of and the community will benefit in every way. The money saved the taxpayers can be used to support and supply health care for all.

Let's get our children out of government education and indoctrination (brain-washing, really) and into the home environment where children belong. Yes, some will use it as an excuse for religious education but that will happen no matter there is public school or not. With children back in the home and away from the gang environment schools foster, we can regain our position in the world as a progressive, educated society. One we no longer have.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Super commercials

From the Super Bowl 40 (egad, and I saw the first one), the ads were fair to excellent. Not any really bad ones although the 5-blade cutter came close. My personal best? It was the Bud Light office hidden beer. Totally zany and fun. Next was the "magic fridge" which I'd seen the first part in previews but the last part made me laugh out loud with the surprise. After that it's some toss-ups: The Clydesdale colt, the Airplane Ooops, the inventive burger king strange. Maybe the Diet Pepsi ad was the worst. Got no satisfaction from that.

Speaking of "no satisfaction" I really didn't get much from the "Stones" or the, so-called, half time "entertainment." Mick was off-key all too often with horrible voice. No amount of prancing made up for that and the lead guitar was about as unimaginitive as I could imagine. Totally worthless and didn't qualify for "entertainment."

The game? The best team lost. That happens a lot and it's just the way it goes on a given day. On the subject of controversial calls, I have to agree with the referee in most cases. For example, the football did cross the white line by, maybe an inch. That's all it takes. Other calls were a bit more touchy. Speaking of touchy, the call that said "no fumble" was strange to me. Ok the player was touched (although probably not enough to cause the fall) but what in the world does it take to call a fumble? From the interpretation, I assume the ball must come loose before any part of the ball carrier touches the ground, except, perhaps the feet and I'm not so sure of that.

Over all, a poor showing for both teams and the halftime. Now the three and a half hour pre-game-show just might have been the best of the whole episode.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

So, you say that Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee hatched a scheme to invade the north and win recognition from England and/or France, and/or any other country. Is that how you'd go about it? Not likely.

To win recognition you must win a battle, take a city, occupy territory. The easy way to get noticed is to take a city. In this case Harrisburg would have been a real plum ripe for the taking. You can see the headlines, "Confederacy occupies Pennsylvania capital." Or "Lee takes Harrisburg - - - State assembly flees." Or many other headlines. All it would have taken was a day or two and move west to, say Pittsburgh and grab the steel mills, then into western Virginia (now West Virginia) and back home, with the Army of the Potomic panting along behind the whole way like a bunch of Keystone Cops (pun intended).

A fast move on Baltimore as another example might have gotten a quick and easy occupation, crippling the nation's capital by cutting it's communications and supply. All Lee had to do was keep moving, avoid major battle, and occupy a few major cities, strew destruction behind his army and make the Army of the Potomic and the federal government look incapable of confining the confederacy. Start thinking and you'll find many more examples of what could have been done with the Army of Northern Virginia to help gain recognition for the confederacy.

Instead, Lee did none of the above, and split the army in enemy territory, avoided a needed occupation (how would Meade have gotten him out of Harrisburg?), and finally threw the army away in totally inept generalship.

The opportunity arose for Robert E. Lee to reunite the United States of America at Gettysburg. In an egregious act of poor generalship, Lee sent fifteen thousand doomed men against an impossible, entrenched position. How do we know this to be the case? The amazing list of facts Lee was aware of at the time make it clear that Lee chose this time to try to sacrifice his army for the cause of reunion. While Lee had attempted to destroy the Confederacy many times prior to Gettysburg, the opposing generals were too inept to take advantage of the opportunities Lee presented. At Gettysburg, Lee finally found the situation he needed to create the win for the Federal army required to end the war. In fact, it appears Lee intended to have the whole of the Army of Northern Virginia destroyed, creating a much quicker end to the war than actually happened. Let's review a bit.

Lee has taken the Army of Northern Virginia into a Union State, Pennsylvania. This was not a long journey, Virginia and Pennsylvania are separated by only a few miles of Maryland at present and, in fact were border states in 1861 when Virginia seceeded from the Union. Lee had made this effort before, even arranging to have a complete set of his plans found by the Army of the Potomic (I wonder how many other sets were planted to be found). That effort resulted in the battle at Sharpsburg, Maryland (Antietam) and a subsequent tie rather than the defeat he had planned. The great battle of Antietam was interpreted by the North as a victory even though it wasn't simply because it was the first time Lee had been stopped, or seemed to have been stopped, from accomplishing his goals and the Federal army was not totally beaten. With the full plans of Lee in his hands, McClelland should have easily defeated Lee but was unable to because of the poor quality of the generalship involved. Further opportunities were given each general who succeeded McClelland and each in his turn failed to take advantage of the openings provided by Lee to be defeated by the Federal army. Ultimately Lee seemed to be the greatest general alive simply because his efforts to be defeated looked like daring genius. Astounding when you look at it.

So, what is the situation leading up to Gettysburg? Lee has recently fought a major battle against Hooker at Chanclersville, one he should have lost and tried desperately to lose. Lee has lost his right hand general, Jackson and has not appreciably damaged the Federal army. Hooker is still in charge of the Army of the Potomac and, while he has had his nose bloodied, is still the dangerous "fighting Joe" Hooker. Lee now abandons Richmond, uses J.E.B. Stuart to screen a move north, something that only lets Hooker know that Lee is moving north and Hooker follows, keeping on the inside of the circle, between Washington D.C. and the Army of Northern Virginia as is appropriate.

Now, things get interesting. As Lee enters Federal territory, Pennsylvania and Maryland, he allows his cavalry screen to wander off with orders to disrupt the supply areas of the Federal army, ostensibly causing the Federal army to move slowly and allowing Lee to resupply his army from the riches of south central Pennsylvania. With little cavalry, Lee will not know the situation of the Federal army and can be surprised, defeated piecemeal on Northern land, and the South will not rise again (so to speak). However, the Federal army now changes leaders and the impetuous "Fighting Joe" Hooker, the general Lee could count on to attack, attack, attack is no longer in charge. The more cautious but more competent general Meade is now in charge. Lee knows Meade will be more difficult to draw into a major battle than Hooker so Lee split up his army even more, discounts all cavalry reports on Federal army positons and continues with the separation of the Confederate army into resupply groups in south central Pennsylvania. Rapid movement at this time by Meade would totally defeat the Confederate army piece by piece. In spite of his bloodied nose, Hooker may have done exactly that. Meade, however is much more cautious and the Federal army is "screening" Washington D.C. for no good reason. The defenses of Washington D.C. are such that it is inpregnable to an army the size of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. More than 400,000 troops are on hand nearly constantly around Washington D.C. with entrenched positions, an inside line of movement and reinforcement, abundant supplies and weapons. If these troops had been released to the field army, the Army of Northern Virginia would have been quickly overwhelmed by sheer numbers in spite of poor generalship.

So, Lee baited Meade to move quickly to smash the Confederate army. Lincoln urges Meade to do exactly that. Meade is in a tough spot. He has just taken over the Army of the Potomac and is well aware of the level of incompetent generalship available. He must have thought the Confederate army was larger and more concentrated than Lee was making available. Pinkerton seems to have kept their job as information specialists by exaggerating the enemy situation to frighten the generals into keeping them on a "just in case they're right" basis and it worked. The Union generals constantly got exaggerated reports of enemy size, weapons, and potential. This alone had created defeats in the past and surely slowed Meade at this point along with the reorganization Meade was required to do "on the fly" so to speak, as the army was following Lee.

At the same time Lee is baiting Meade to attack and win, Lee further separated his army, further ignores his advisors, and has the Army of Northern Virginia spread out over more than a hundred miles. He is on the outside of the supply line, has crossed a major river that could easily flood to impede passage, trapping him in the north, the Army of the Potomac could block passage to the south, trapping the Army of Northern Virginia to the death, he is in hostile territory, on less well known territory, and cannot be resupplied or reinforced from Richmond or any other southern area. Lee has deliberately walked into a trap and it only takes a small effort on the Union generalship to close the door on him. Was Lee trusting in the stupidity of northern generals to ignore the facts? Not likely. Lee was too aware of the potential the huge army the Federal had available to think he could just set this trap and not have it close. Incredibly, even at this level, the Federal leaders did not close the trap he so carefully set and he had to make an obvious error to "create" a defeat. Good grief!! Lee might as well have sent a written message to the newspapers saying "come and get me, I'm available" and all these signals were, and still are, ignored.

Now, knowing he is greatly outnumbered by the closing Federal army, Lee continues his separation of the Confederate army and will wait to be trapped. When this does not happen, he moves even further north along the Susquehanna river, creating a better trap. Just let the Federal army entrench south of Lee and remove the ability to return south. Then, close on the Confederate army and keep them in position, much as Grant did later starting with the Wilderness and ending at Appomatox Court House. Lee continues to wait. The ostensible argument for being in the north is that he will resupply his army with shoes and other consumer goods. Very few weapons are available for resupply here in south central Pennsylvania but there is food and shoes. Kind of a weak arguement isn't it. The other arguement was that he would draw Hooker (and later Meade) into a battle on Lee's choice of ground. Yet when the battle began, he threw this away and took what Meade and circumstances offered even when it was certain the Confederate position was not as strong as the Federal defensive position. Longstreet confronted Lee over and over on this and Lee changed the reason from finding a strong point to defeat the Federal army to the opinion that "they are there and I will attack them" as if that were a good reason. You have to remember, that the Federal army was "there" any time Lee wanted. He always knew where the Federal army was even though at Gettysburg, he could pretend he did not know. Stuart did not have all the cavalry with him and Lee had sufficient to know where the Federal army was and what it was doing. He pretended to have no confidence in the reports in order to continue with his plan of a defeat.

This time, Lee could not play the game of "lost plans" and was required to reach new levels of seeming arrogance and "ability" to create his defeat. Waiting patiently for the Federal army to close, Lee spread his army. When the clash finally came, Lee allowed the Federal army and circumstances to create the battlefield. Unfortunately for a lot of lives to be lost in the next year and a half, the Federal generals also allowed circumstances to create the battlefield. Even the most rudimentary evaluation of Lee's position shows the trap he has offered. Ultimately, he had to play a trump card of stupidity to create the win for the Federals he was working on.

Of course, it was important that Lee not appear to be actually causing a defeat. Once the battle began to be joined, he had to follow with what he had created. Cavalry off to the west someplace, disjointed units up the river and roving the countryside for forage, and a large, very large Federal army to the south, almost but not quite blocking a return to Virginia. Try playing that card for a win. Pretending Lee is a masterful tactician falls apart at this point. Pretending to go into Pennsylvania to gain a great win, destroy the Federal army, and occupy Washington or Baltimore disregards all reason and the facts of manpower and entrenched weaponry. Lee has set a trap alright, but it is for the Confederacy, not the Federal army. However, now Lee began to pull in the Army of Northern Virginia for the fight. A fight that should clearly have been the finish of Lee's army.

Once the armies are heavily engaged and positions solidified, Lee can see now that the Federal army is not going to take the bait and close the trap on the Army of Northern Virginia. Now, he creates disjointed attacks from first one side then another side, supposedly coordinated but actually handled in such a manner as to create nothing more than threats with much ammunition expenditure and loss of units available for fighting. As Lee gradually weakens the Confederate forces, he is faced with the problem of a major section of the Army of Northern Virginia that is fully intact, fully armed, and relatively unbloodied. A dangerous core of the Confederate army that he cannot keep available or the Federals will not be able to finish the job of destroying the Army of Northern Virginia. In order to destroy this solid core of his army, Lee came up with a plan that even the lowliest privates knew could not succeed. Lee took this flower of the Confederate army, 15,000 strong and sent them across one mile of open field and fences, uphill, directly in the face of the center of the Federal army which was well entrenched behind stone fences, had short interior lines of reinforcement, and were fully ready for the attack. Even a first year student at West Point would understand in advance the results of such an endeavor. When all else failed to get the Federals to destroy his army, Lee choose to destroy the Confederate army himself.

Now, trapped against a swollen river, out of ammunition for the big guns, deeply wounded and weakened, Lee is finally in the trap he has arranged. Lee now leaves the field slowly, taking his time, waiting at the Potomac until it can safely be crossed, not putting his army in battle array, simply stringing them our for destruction. A strong move by the Federal army will end the Army of Northern Virginia. Not without a fight, of course, but an end it will be. Casually, Lee waited for the final blow, arranging for it to be as painless as possible, given the circumstances of battles as bloody as they were then. Lee virtually offered the neck of his army to the sword. Meade, however, sat in place and allowed Lee to go back to Virginia. The next opponent Lee will face is Grant, a general of a different stripe. Grant would never have allowed Lee back to Virginia. Possibly even Hooker would have followed up and had blocked the way south. But Grant! Allow Lee to walk back slowly to Virginia? Not likely.

Nonetheless, Lee got his "high water mark" and the defeat needed to end the Confederacy. And it was close. The north was ready for one more loss to allow the south to go their way. There was a lot of sympathy with ending the war for a great many reasons. The south was a poor agrarian society, riddled with slavery (and the majority of the northern population cared not a whit for the plight of the slaves or blacks at all), the north was now experiencing great abundance, increased trade with the world, even increased trade with the Confederate States. There were many more reasons to let the southern states go their way and, after so much bloodshed, difficult to see that it was worth the continuation of such misery for such small stakes. However, Lee provided the impetus to bring on the end of the war and the reunion of the states. Gotta give him credit as the father of the rebirth of the Union.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Save Money, track Criminals.

With simple GPS technology known as V-TRAC the criminal system could save huge amounts of money, need many fewer Law Enforcement Officers, and keep better track on the many criminals harvesting money, goods, harm, and lives from our society. ZDNET newsletter of January 16, 2006 includes an article on "Where's my trash now?" Here's an exerpt:

Where's my trash now?

And you thought the hydraulic arms that picked up the trash cans were high-tech. Garbage collection in San Diego's Environmental Services Department (ESD) can now track trucks and manage the fleet using a GPS technology called V-TRAC, reports Government Technology.

Along with GPS technology, V-TRAC has server-side vehicle management/fleet tracking software, database management, and Automated Refuse Tonnage System (ARTS), designed in-house and used daily by supervisors to assign drivers to routes. By employing V-TRAC the city saves an estimated $1 million per year.

If the city of San Diego can save a million dollars a year with such a system, imagine the savings to the criminal justice system, to say nothing about the savings in lives, property, and stress to our society. Come on people, let us stop hiring more police and have more efficiency.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

One in a million.

If someone or something has a "one in a million" chance of happening today, then it will happen about 400 times today in the United States alone and about 6,000 times world wide. How about a "one in a billion" chance. That would happen about 6 times today in the world. One in a Trillion? Probably happen 2 or 3 times this year. So, why do we blame god for unusual happenings or call them miracles?

Perhaps it is comforting to have some one else in charge of our lives, of our fate. Maybe we find it difficult to think these unusual occurances might be in the control of a "god of probablilities." Or, it's possible we just don't want to take responsibility for our actions or for the random level of many outside influences. In any event, what it comes down to is that "If it can happen, it will."

Will the bird flu jump to humans? Yes. That one is really a no-brainer. It has jumped to humans several or many times already but either not in the mode required to replicate or in such a way as to be isolated and allowed to die without infecting other humans. With the many, many trillions of opportunity for human infection with the proper mutation, there is little chance of such a jump not happening. The best we can hope for is that the jump is done by a mutated virus that is less deadly than the original strain. This may already have happened and we haven't noticed simply because people get sick and recover in a similar manner to any other "ordinary" flu.

There is some thought that something similar may have happened with the 1918 bird flu. Studies seem to show the 1918 bird flu popping up nearly simultaneously in areas that it is nearly impossible to allow for human transportation of the virus. The idea is that the flu was a "two stage" flu. In this manner, many people caught a lower level of flu, something which most survived but, similar to the chicken pox/shingles virus, the flu virus of this strain may have sat around in the body and, like an alarm clock set to a certain time, erupted almost at the same moment all over the world.

As a side note, this could be used to bolster the "Intelligent Design" argument in that we have computer virus that are similar and are timed to erupt on certain dates or within a number of days of the original infection and the "intelligent Design" supporters may say that the medical virus (1918 flu) was "designed" to do the same by some, perhaps not-so-benign god but one intelligent enough to design such a virus. I bet it could be done by humans right now.

If it's a one in a many trillion chance the deadly form of the bird flu (OK, AVIAN flu for those picky ones), no matter the many trillion chance, the deadly form of the bird flu will make the jump if you do the statistics. Just ask youself how many individual virus are out there, how many individuals are carrying about a hundred billion of these individual virus right now (count all the pretty birds), how much interface between these infected individuals and all the ways each individual virus can have an opportunity to reach a human, and the results are mind boggling.

Of course, you can use the idea of a "one in a million" chance happening as an opportunity for good. After all, someone actually does win the lottery. Someone does actually buy an acre or so of waste land for next to nothing only to find it was the last piece of property needed for a new, up-scale shopping mall and is suddenly worth a few million and the developers are begging to give those millions to you. It does happen. You might also remember that there are some airplanes flying right now that have peoples names written across their nose and those planes will somehow, some way seek out those people to kill. One in a million? Happens all the time.

Saturday, January 07, 2006

UFO trends

After looking at all the photos on www.ufocasebook.com/bestufopictures1 to 7, an interesting trend shows. The early photos, when photography was actually easy to manipulate (in spite of the web owner's comments) tended to be detailed and sharp, showing a lot of focus. As time trended, and the web owner has been good enough to time-list the photos, the photos moved into more light-emission and finally into principally fuzzy dots. While this trend is not as simple as that and I haven't run a statistical compilation, the trend from detailed UFO's to energy-emitting UFO's into fuzzy UFO's is pretty obvious.

If you ever wanted a quick look at a time span of UFO photo's and a pretty nice job of commenting, give http://www.ufocasebook.com/ a look.

Now, what would cause such an interesting trend, given that there are many more cameras with many more features and better lenses and film (or image capture methods, if you will). Well, better lenses might be an exaggeration given the new throw-away plastic lenses but in general better is appropriate. I believe the trend is caused by a move from faked photos to real photos. Of course a died-in-the-wool UFOlogist will say it's because the UFO operators have gotten cautious and more aware of cameras (probably a tool they never developed---puzzle that on out on your own) or because of changing technology of the UFO society, bringing better UFO vehicles to earth.

Is there a reason UFO's would be interested in Earth? Are we edible? Potentially a bio-crop? Was Douglas Adams right and we're an experimental computer and the rats are running the maze, not the scientists? Hmmmm. I don't see any reason for the UFO's "buzzing" the planet that is a good one. Mostly it seems they would help us stop the mess if they were friends. Since they are not giving us direct aid (and I don't see any sign of indirect aid, either) then they simply are not friends and can "bugger off."